Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/72

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

. n. JULY 23,

John Falconer with the title "Cryptomenysis Patefacta ; or, the Art of Secret Information disclosed without a Key, containing Plain and Demonstrative Rules for decyphering all Manner of Secret Writing. London, 1685," pp. 180. Among the various methods then in use for conveying secret information, I do not notice the very obvious one of im- bedding an English sentence in a Latin com- position. In the seventeenth century, when communications in Latin between learned men were common enough, such a device might have easily escaped detection. I have put together ten lines, which, though appa- rently only a fragment of a satire on the intemperance of language and waste of sub- stance incident to contested elections, really convey the following information on the recent East Herts election :

" Evelyn Cecil, Robert Spencer crash in contest for Parliament in June. Conservatives hold the seat. Reduced numbers."

All that need be claimed for the Latin is that it should pass muster scan and construe and make tolerable sense. Few, probably, reading the following lines would suspect that there was anything cryptogrammatic about them, though they might fairly be puzzled about the sense here and there :

Rauca revelavit synodus convitia. Cedit Concilio robur, nee tristis inertia vulgus Arcet, ne faciant lucri dispendia certi. Cras his in vicis sicci convivia testes Culpent, at forsan partes et prselia mentes Constringunt, nee nunc jejune vivere prodest. Conservat rivus sedes atque irrigat hortos Pulchr^, si soldus ex theca ssepe sequatur Soldum ; sic plebes aurum ludique reducunt Ante pedes, nummosque beant, bursamque salutant.

MDCCCXCVIII.

If it be objected that the person for whom the information is intended might fail to

Eerceive the whole, it would be a simple plan )r the writer to accent slightly each word containing an English element.

According to Lowndes, Falconer published another book on the same subject : "Eules for decyphering Secret Writing. By J. f\ London, 1692," 8vo. He is not included in the ' Diet. Nat. Biog.' Does Mr. Thos. Falconer's 'Bibliography of the Falconer Family ' throw any light upon him 1 C. DEBDES.

Brighton.

"WiSHY - WASHY." Perhaps it is worth while to note that this form is not peculiar to English. Koolman quotes the East Friesic wisje-wasje, in the sense of stupid chatter, from the verb waschen in the sense " to prattle." The German waschen means both to wash and to chatter. Hence G. wascherei, gossip ; waschhaft, loquacious ; gewasch, idle

talk. The G. wascherin means (1) a washer- woman, (2) a gossip. One sense of ivishy- washy appears to have been " twaddling." WALTER W. SKEAT.

"Go ABOUT." This expression formerly meant to attempt or set about doing any- thing ; but it has so completely lost that meaning that the revisers of the New Testa- ment did well in John vii. 19, 20, and Rom. x. 3, to substitute " seek." One is the more surprised that they have left the A.V. trans- lation " go about " in Acts ix. 29. The Greek word there is not (as in the other places re- ferred to) taken from ^TCIV, but is kir^eipovv. Now this verb occurs in only two other places in the New Testament in Luke i. 1 and in Acts xix. 13 in both which it is translated as " take in hand " or " take upon them." Some equivalent expression, such as "undertook," would surely have been better in Acts ix. 29, where the idea of " going " is no more involved than in the passages above referred to in John vii. and Rom. x. So far as I am aware, the expression "go about" is never used now in the above sense. Doubt- less the rude retort, "Go about your busi- ness," originally meant simply " work at " or " attend to," but the literal sense of " go " is now generally understood to be conveyed in it, and the user does mean to bid his inter- locutor to go away and do his own business, which is implied to be somewhere else.

W. T. LYNN. Blackheath.

THE HISTORY AND GENEALOGY OF " TOMMY ATKINS." An interesting correspondence on this subject has recently appeared in the Western Morning Neivs, which perhaps is worthy of preservation in the columns of 'N. & Q.' F. H. A., who writes the first letter, says : ; .;..

" Thomas Atkins made his first appearance in public about 1845, near which date an authorized pattern ledger was introduced for soldiers' accounts, with headings and all trading items printed, much to the relief of pay sergeants, who had always been required to enter everything in manuscript. The introduction of printed ledgers had been attempt sd in some regiments, but all general officers were not agreed in accepting them at their inspections. The new ledger had a model form of completed account pasted inside the cover, and this bore the signatures Thomas Aitkens' and 'A. J. Lawrence, captain,' showing that it had emanated from the Rifle Brigade, in which presumably the original T. A. then served as a private."

But Capt. J. W. Mills (14th Regiment) gives quite another account of Tommy's origin. He says :

'F. H. A. has not given the correct history of ' Tommy Atkins' as applied generally to the British